


Four-wheeled Friends

by notaverse



Category: Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Vehicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 21:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaverse/pseuds/notaverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sacred bond between a man and his car manifests itself in strange ways on Route 66.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four-wheeled Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threewalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/gifts).



> **Title:** Four-wheeled Friends  
>  **Fandom:** Route 66 ~ Tatta Hitori no America / JE  
>  **Characters:** Yamapi, Akkun (the truck), Jin (kind of)  
>  **Rating:** G  
>  **Genre:** Fluff  
>  **Disclaimer:** Not mine, damnit.
> 
> **A/N:** MC wanted fic from _Route 66_ with Yamapi and Akkun, so this is my attempt. ^_^

The battered red truck is as old as Yamapi himself, and clearly not the hottest set of wheels on the road, but he loves it anyway. Akkun might leak when it rains, might have cracked seats with stuffing peeking through, but he's got one thing going for him that no flashy sports car could ever provide, and Yamapi gets the shock of his life when a familiar voice from the dash tells him to go easy on the pedals about twenty miles out of Chicago.

"J-Jin?"

"Akkun," the truck corrects him. "You didn't name me that long ago - you've forgotten already?"

Yamapi pulls over as soon as he can because while he talks to cars often, they've never spoken back to him before, and he thinks it's probably not safe to drive while losing your mind. He stares warily at the dashboard. Maybe the jet lag's getting to him. Cars don't talk - do they?

"Akkun," he says carefully, glad he'd switched off the camera a while back, "why do you sound like Jin?"

The steering wheel turns first left, then right. Good thing the engine's off. "My voice comes from my owner," Akkun says. "The last guy named me after his girlfriend. You have no idea how irritating it is to suddenly start talking like a ex-hooker named Mitzi. Your guy doesn't sound much more manly but he's an improvement, I guess."

"He's not 'my guy'!"

Akkun honks the horn twice in succession, somehow managing to make it sound like a buzzer on a quiz show. "Whatever you say, Pi."

That the truck knows the abbreviated version of his nickname - knows anything about him at all, in fact - should be terrifying. Yamapi should probably get the hell out the door and hitchhike his way to somewhere he can sleep it off, until he's no longer hearing voices from the dashboard. Especially Jin's voice, because Jin's in LA right now, all the way across the country, and not camped out in his best friend's truck.

But it's nice being able to hear Jin's voice, even if it's not coming from Jin's body. Manly road trips might be good for the soul but they sure are lonely, and this one's barely started. He doesn't know the film crew very well yet; they're following behind, periodically filming his progress and stopping when he stops. They're parked behind him now and it's only a matter of time before someone comes out to see if he's okay.

Which he's not, since he's hearing things.

"Why aren't we moving anymore?" Akkun whines. "I thought we were going on a road trip together?"

Yamapi closes his eyes. It's not Jin. It's got Jin's badly-concealed neediness under a layer of frustration, and it knows just which buttons to press, but it's not Jin. As much as he'd love for Jin to be sitting in the passenger seat, sharing the cross-country adventure, it's not Jin. It's not even in the passenger seat.

"Why are you talking to me?" he mutters.

"Because it's a really long way to California and I'm bored," Akkun says. "You're not seriously going to drive ten thousand miles in absolute silence, are you?"

"I think you've just quadrupled the distance!" 

This is familiar too - the nonsensical arguments, facts blown out of all proportion. They'll be talking about _Dragonball_ in a minute. Clearly, Akkun is just as bad at maths as his namesake. Yamapi should've known better than to name his truck after his best friend, but the _SMAP X SMAP_ clips he'd watched last week had stuck with him - or rather, the image of Jin with an afro had stuck with him - and a talking vehicle had been the result. Good thing he hadn't named it after Ryo.

"Twenty-five hundred, ten thousand, whatever," Akkun says. "I'm good for it. Probably. If you treat me right."

"It's going to be a pretty tough journey." Yamapi doesn't want to sugarcoat it. He also doesn't want to talk to what is probably a figment of his imagination, but he can't all very well ignore Akkun. What if he starts shouting? What if other people can hear him? "I'll keep you filled up, and we might manage a carwash or two, but..." He trails off, trying to figure out what a truck might want. "I could get you some fuzzy dice?" he offers.

There's a clank from somewhere in the back; Yamapi thinks it might've been the exhaust. No fuzzy dice, then. 

"Just try find me a station that's playing something other than Nickelback?"

\-----

Despite the difficulty Yamapi has in fulfilling Akkun's request, man and machine form a partnership over the course of the journey - though only when no one from the crew happens to be around. The truck clams up whenever anyone else is within earshot, or if Yamapi says he's switching on the camera. He's not sure if it's that no one else can hear Akkun, or if Akkun simply doesn't want to talk to anyone else. Maybe it's both.

It's nice, in a way. Yamapi's had enough sleep now to be relatively certain this isn't jet lag, and no one's made any comments to him that would suggest he's losing his marbles, so after weighing up the situation, he's reached the conclusion that he's perfectly sane.

He just drives a talking truck.

A _jealous_ talking truck.

"I want to go chase cows too!" Akkun says after Yamapi tells him about meeting real-life Texan cowboys over dinner.

"I'm not going to chase cows. They're going to teach me to ride. I've never been on a horse before!"

"Neither have I." The driver-side window rolls down by itself, which Yamapi has come to recognise as Akkun's version of sulking.

They have to be practical about this. "You can't fit on a horse," Yamapi points out. "Not even a large one."

"Bet you can't either. The poor horse will be crushed and you won't be able to ride it, not after that steak you told me about."

"I didn't eat all of it!" Not for the first time, Yamapi wishes Jin were there in person - at least he'd have had some help with the steak. Jin's ridden horses before, but they seem to prefer biting him to carrying him, so he says.

Akkun's still sulking when Yamapi drives him to go shopping for proper cowboy attire, and it's not until they're leaving the horses behind that Yamapi understands why. 

"It was fun riding the horses, but I don't want to ride across America on a horse," he says, patting the steering wheel. "I'd never be able to walk again! I only want to travel on Route 66 with you."

It's not raining but the windscreen wipers cross the glass a couple of times. Yamapi hopes that's a good sign. As far as he can tell, Akkun can do whatever he likes, but he chooses to let humans drive him and he's never tried to take over while they've been on the road. 

"Is it more fun being with me than riding a horse?" Akkun asks.

"Definitely. The horses don't talk to me."

When Akkun laughs it's Jin's high-pitched giggle that emerges from the dashboard, music to Yamapi's ears. It's been a while since he's heard Jin laugh like that, so playful and carefree. Jin's so busy these days. Yamapi hopes they have time to hang out in California. He wants to tell Jin all the things he's learned about America, about the people he's met along the way and the weird and wonderful food he's eaten so far. Jin's spent a lot more time in America, of course, but not like this, and Yamapi feels happy that they can add this to their list of common ground now.

He can't say any of this to Jin yet, so he tells Akkun his stories instead. Akkun listens to even the most trivial of tales without complaint, something the real Jin would have trouble with, and when Yamapi comments on it, Akkun's reply makes him want to pull over and spread his arms as far around the truck as he can.

_"How else am I supposed to learn about the world if you don't tell me?"_

It's a little crazy, feeling sorry for a car, but Yamapi can't help it, any more than he could help feeling a trifle guilty over thinking about cheating on Akkun with some of the cars he's run into on Route 66. Other cars, bikes, horses - none of them talk to him, none of them _need_ him. Not the way Akkun does. After all, he gave Akkun a name - and with it, a voice. That makes him responsible, in a way, for everything Akkun is right now. They're in this together, sharing all the joys and sorrows of a roadtrip as far as they can.

It's supposed to be a solitary trip, one man on a lonely highway - albeit one man with a film crew - and in some ways, it is. Yamapi gets along okay with the crew, but there's not a single person travelling with him that he knew before they started filming. No family, no friends. Having Akkun to talk to changes that. Akkun doesn't know everything Jin knows, only what Yamapi _thinks_ Jin knows, and it's weird to think that this is a version of his best friend created entirely by his imagination.

But then Akkun will sing English love songs as they watch the sunset together, and they'll laugh when he forgets half the words, and suddenly it doesn't seem so weird after all.


End file.
